2008 International Design Excellence Award

Out of 1517 entries, 35 were awarded the coveted Gold award, while 77 received Silver awards and 93 won Bronze awards. For the first time this year, 389 finalists were named in addition to the winners. For the first time in the history of the competition, the expert jury bestowed two “Best in Show” awards: one to SizeChina, a design research project that assembled data from a representative cross-section of people from mainland China to create the first-ever digital database of Chinese head and face shapes; and the other to Apple’s now-iconic iPhone.

Beautiful and Expressive Packaging Design

Packaging design has the primary goal to attract customers’ attention. For this purpose, package designs can not simply inform the customers, but also provoke feelings and communicate emotions. An effective packaging looks attractive, impresses with its creativity and is just nice to have on the shelf.

DzineBlog

Founded in December 2007, Dzine blog Is all about designs. Here you can find inspirational designs and some good tips in logo, graphics and web designing. The goal of this site is to share quality graphic design resources, graphic design tips and much more good inspirational designs and useful information in designing, precisely and regularly.

Packages You Won’t Need a Saw to Open

A number of retailers and manufacturers have a gift for holiday shoppers: product packaging that will not result in lacerations and stab wounds.

Blog Interface Design 2.0

Blogs have permeated just about every corner of human interest from arphids to zoology and continue to grow at a furious pace. Despite their popularity, many blogs suffer from interface design shortcomings. Unlike issues of spam and authority, these problems have relatively straightforward solutions that could considerably increase the utility of blog content.

Are Digital Marketing + Social Design Compatible?

Social media and marketing is no longer an 'emerging media' buzzword, but a discipline that nearly every marketer has embraced. What tactics are smart marketers eyeing? Where does the discipline lie within an agency? What kinds of new social media models will emerge in 2008?

Music on your arm

Now you can carry music on your arm.

Design Matters

Go here.

Eco-gems

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Green Cities
What all greening cities -- and we use the word "greening" as no city, not even Portland, is yet truly green with a capital "G" -- have in common is vision and policy plan for smart growth. After that, the other important factors seem to be:

• Good streets for bike and pedestrian traffic
  
• Robust transit
  
• Lots of green canopy
  
• Expanding and connecting of open spaces
  
• Natural storm water management techniques
  
• Renewable energy for metropolitan power generation
  

NOTCOT

NOTCOT Inc is a growing network of design sites currently including NOTCOT.com and innovative community contributed sites NOTCOT.org + NotCouture.com + Liqurious.com (+ previously TasteSpotting.com).

NOTCOT is a visual filtration of ideas + aesthetics + amusements. NOTCOT's two sites have become the daily sources of inspiration for creatives everywhere, fighting the good fight against "creative block" since 2005 with visually stunning imagery, the latest in international trends, and a passion for all things well designed.

Miami Dade College is a Super Building

Located at Biscayne Boulevard and NE 5th Street in downtown Miami, the Campus Center for Miami Dade college looks like something out of OMA’s handbag.

Are Designers also Marketers?

Bokardo is a blog about interface design for social web sites and applications.

20 cool interaction design concepts

Here are twenty interaction design concepts, both 2D and 3D concepts. Every interaction designer out there should have a look at these concepts to get inspired! As the products are totally different they have not been ranked, just numbered, enjoy!

Shanghai and Industrial Design

Waikit Chung, born and grew up in the Netherlands and graduated with a Bachelor and Master Degree in Industrial Design from the Delft University of Technology. This is his blog on design.

Currently, he's designing experiences for all kind of people at Asentio Design in Shanghai, China.

What makes IDEO so... IDEO?

Want to see what makes a firm like IDEO an almost magical appeal when you're a design student -- what makes it so successful at continually turning out concepts that not only answer design questions, but answer them in ways that are often so far off the beaten path that they create entirely new product definitions? Read on

Part 2

Quito 1: Paisajes Emergentes

In August of this year, a design competition was launched to generate ideas to repurpose Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport after its planned closing in a couple of years.

IDSA

The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) is the voice of the industrial design profession, advancing the quality and positive impact of design.

Industrial Design Sandbox

Here's a neat blog site I've discovered regarding thoughts about industrial design, its future, and present.

Compressed-Air Cars Planned for Airport Test, US Launch

If Luxembourg's Motor Development International gets its wish, the next wave of alternative-energy vehicles will be a real bunch of windbags.

50 Strange Buildings of the World

Here are some rather odd and different building designs.

Liz Diller: Architecture is a special effects machine

In this engrossing EG talk, architect Liz Diller shares her firm DS+R's more unusual work, including the Blur Building, whose walls are made of fog, and the revamped Alice Tully Hall, which is wrapped in glowing wooden skin.

Amazon designs new packaging

No more jaws of life to open that package from Amazon.

The Future of Healthcare Is In Your Hand(set)

Cell phones changed everything in emerging markets. Isolated communities got a taste of access and upward mobility they’d never known before. Entire economies shifted as people were able to leapfrog roadblocks to communication. Now mobile technology is promising to transform healthcare in the same way.

Designer Open 2008

DESIGNERSOPEN 2008 is one of the biggest design events in the east of Germany. During three days (24-26 Oct.)

How Blog

Here's a great resource for information on design.

Alli packaging for GSK consumer healthcare

In preparation for the launch of alli, the first FDA-approved over-the-counter diet pill, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare sought IDEO’s help in designing the product’s packaging. IDEO looked closely at key behaviors of dieters as well as stages of the dieter’s personal journey, conceiving a system of tools and materials to support individuals physically and emotionally, before, during, and after their diet.

Design Thinking

A blog who main topic is 'design thinking.'

Reconsidering Nike

Nike has come a long way since its early attempts to green its supply chain.

Design Mind magazine launch

Watch/listen to a few comments from Frog executives and the creative team behind Design Mind about print and the publication itself.

Go to Design Mind magazine.

Design Thinking and Marketing

What does “design thinking” actually mean?

Getting people to imagine

Where do you learn experience design and interactive design? Are the D-schools doing a good job producing design thinkers? What about cross-disciplinary designs? How expensive are D-schools?

Organic Essentialism

World's most lightweight suitcase.

'Onehundred&ten' is the world's most lightweight suitcase, designed by ross lovegrove
for british high-end luggage maker globetrotter.

Banpo Bridge

Just a twist of design, a splattering of paint, a cheeky addition to something old can make it look brightly cheerful and attractive to the eyes again.

50 Stunning Examples of a great redesign: My Top Picks

A redesign can be worth its weight in gold if you get it right. There is a thin line between freshening up your design, and taking a step backwards with a redesign. Sometimes a redesign can be subtle and simple, and other times it can be a huge re-vamp of a company and it’s goals. Check these.